Sola Fide and the Total Christ Church I. Introduction: Confessing Sola Fide Today Confessing sola fide today feels a bit like identifying with a political ideology. No matter how loyal you are to one politically ideology, you will regularly find yourself scratching your head and saying, “They may say they have the same ideology as me, but they don’t represent my understanding of that ideology.” This is especially true in our total Christ, high gospel, high-church subculture within a subculture (within a subculture?) known as Mission Anabaino. On the one hand, the high gospel crowd has worked hard to highlight the way in which faith draws everything from Christ and contributes nothing. But this formulation has often reduced the church and her minsters to nothing more than an accessory in the Christian life. On the other hand, the reformed high-church crowd has joined Calvin in believing “Away from her [the church’s] bosom one cannot hope for any forgiveness of sins or any salvation.”i But often these congregations and pastors, in their attempts to recover the right administration of the sacraments, downplay the sinner’s subjective experience of faith in Christ. These churches and their liturgical precision often pose stumbling blocks for those exploring Christianity. The goal of this paper is to encourage ministers to celebrate and practice sola fide in our high gospel and high-church congregations. II. Sola Fide and the Reformation Though a myriad of contemporary debates rage about how justification and faith fit together, it is important that we grasp the situation into which the clear articulation of sola fide was birthed. During the time of the reformation, the question, “How is a sinner made righteous?” was ground zero for the debates between Rome and the Reformers. The medieval consensus was relatively clear: one was made righteous before God through a type of justification received at baptism. This justification included both the renewal of the human being and the process of that renewal.ii Justification was an ongoing process by which one was gradually made righteous so that one could stand before a holy God. One example of this would be the approach to justification articulated by the 15th century nominalist theologian Gabriel Biel. Luther studied under Biel’s faithful disciples in Erfort and his views were in the background of much of Luther’s debates regarding justification. Biel taught that apart from the sacramental infusion of grace no one could earn any real merit. However, when one did one’s best, it became possible to earn a semimerit (meritum de congruo).iii God, because of his covenantal promises, committed himself to extending grace to the baptized individual who did his or her best morally. This view was common from the pulpit. Johannes Geiler of Keisersberg, cathedral preacher at Strasbourg and one of the most popular preachers of the 15th century, frequently referenced this idea in his sermons. He would illustrate this view of justification with sailing, instructing his congregation that “a ship cannot receive wind in her sails so long as her sails aren’t up. So also, we cannot receive God’s grace without the preparation of raising the sail!”iv Justification was given to every baptized human, but the job of humans was to raise the sails by doing good works so that God’s grace could make them more and more righteous. It’s easy to see the anxiety of a monk like Luther flourishing in this system like this. Sola Fide Page #1 It is in the face of this approach to justification that Luther would argue Christ fully and finally accomplished not only salvation but also right standing before God for sinners. And this salvation was appropriated through faith alone. Luther classically argued that a sinner is “justified by faith alone and not any works”v The God of the Scriptures was a God who justifies the ungodly and counts his or her faith as righteousness (Rom. 4:5). But this birthed a subsequent question, “What is faith?” The Medieval church taught that faith, at its core, was simply mental assent to the doctrines of the church. This was called “unformed faith”. Before justification could fully take place unformed faith had to be matched with contrition and expressed in acts of love. When this happened, unformed faith became formed faith. Though the measure of forgiveness extended was commensurate with the degree to which sin was actually overcome through formed faith, this was still gracious on God’s part, as his grace in baptism enabled the sinner to once more merit salvation.vi The reformers rejected the notion of “unformed faith” and “formed faith” altogether. “Formed faith” was just one more form of legalism. Justification, for the reformers, was not the goal an individual worked towards, but the foundation of the Christian life. Faith only was the instrument of our justification, and anything more, even defining faith as assent plus works of love, was a distortion of how a sinner was made right with God. As Luther famously translated Romans 3:28, “For we hold that one is justified by faith alone apart from works of the law.”vii Sola became the watchword. The Reformers were clear, a sinner was not justified on account of faith nor could faith ever be considered a human accomplishment or achievement. Faith, by its very nature, is passive in its inability to make any contributions. Though faith actively receives Christ, it makes no offering itself. Faith excludes any possibility of boasting. It draws all its power from Christ, its object. Faith has no power apart from Christ. Faith itself is ultimately a gift from God. The Roman Catholics rightly understood the Protestant emphasis on the sola of fide. And then responded in the Council of Trent by confessing in Canon IX, If any one says, that by faith alone the impious is justified; in such a way as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to the obtaining the grace of justification, … let him be anathema.viii On the one hand, this canon shows a misunderstanding of the Reformers doctrine of sola fide. No Reformer believed faith could be expressed alone. Works always accompanied faith, but faith only was the instrument by which a sinner received justification. The council was clear, the sinner was required to co-operate in order to obtain justification. The canons go on to state that anyone who does not believe our good works merit our eternal life in justification is cursed.ix As the reformation progressed, the reformers and the Roman Catholic theologians only grew more clearly divided on sola fide. Sola fide came to be the doctrine by which Protestant Christianity distinguished herself, not only from the Roman Catholic tradition, but also from all other religions! To profess the reformation faith was to believe that faith in Jesus was the instrumental cause of our justification. Sinners could receive all the benefits of the salvation won by Christ only through the instrument of faith! III. Sola Fide and the Scriptures But did the reformers doctrine of sola fide arise out of the scriptures? As any student of theology knows, a quick search of the word “faith” and “alone” will pull up James 2:24, “You Sola Fide Page #2 see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” If theology is to be done by proof texting, sola fide is out. It is interesting that the Westminster Confession, far from avoiding this seemingly contradictory passage, actually utilizes it (along with Galatians 5:4-6) in their attack on Rome. In the Roman system, justification is by faith, but that faith needs baptism. At baptism, the sinner is infused with righteousness making the unjust person a just person. The sacrament is the instrument by which unformed faith is infused with grace bringing about the foundation for a formed faith. In this way, faith alone cannot justify, but needs the sacrament and additional works of love. For the Westminster Divines justification does not come from an isolated faith or a “solo” faith, rather “faith … is the alone instrument of justification, yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love” (WCF 11.2). Following James, faith never comes all by itself for the Divines. In the Roman scheme, faith does not save, because faith must be formed by baptism, the real instrument of justification. But the Westminster Divines, with James, cannot conceive of a nude faith, a faith that exists all by itself. To put it bluntly, the Divines reject the idea that one is justified by faith alone if by faith alone we mean a nude faith or a solitary faith. Faith always comes with friends. It is always accompanied by all other saving graces and works of love in the Westminster scheme! This understanding of saving faith is in line with James. “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” An isolated faith not “accompanied by other saving graces” nor “working by love” is not the faith that justifies. “So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:14). Saving faith cannot exist by itself! This is why James will use Abraham as a perfect case study in this context. The scriptures declare, “Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness” (James 2:23; citing Gen. 15:6). But this was no isolated faith, for the righteousness of Abraham was fulfilled in his offering up Isaac.